Beloved icon of Windows history appears to be in the rear view for good

For those upset about the lack of a start button in Windows 8, prepare yourself for another disappointment -- "Windows Blue", an upcoming short-cycle successor to Windows 8, is not expected to bring the feature back.

The source of this supposed leak is CNBeta, a site with close insider ties at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), which gained respect by accurately leaking a number of early Windows 8 details.

Other info from the site includes suggests that Microsoft will further flatten the UI on the desktop (think the Metro/Windows 8 UI style), the taskbar/desktop will get tweaks, the price will be low (or free), and the new kernel version number will be v6.3 (corroborated by other independent reports). The final remnants of the Aero UI, which was a staple of Windows Vista and Windows 7 is also being bid adieu, like the Start button before it.

The start button went the way of the Dodo with Windows 8. [Image Source: Jason Mick/DailyTech]

Neowinreports that a summer launch of Windows Blue is expected. And its contacts close to Microsoft hint that the name will be some sort of riff on Windows 8, not Windows 9, as some suspected.

(For the record you can get a Start Menu-like menu by moving your mouse to the lower left corner of the screen and right-clicking. Voilà, magic!)

There is a chicken and the egg problem that you're hoping gets solved. Android apps are mostly second rate because the money isn't there for developers to target for first and optimize for, and Windows RT and WP7/8 apps are lagging due to a low customer base (it isn't the fault of Microsoft's SDK which is probably the best one out there).

I'm passing on Windows 8 for now. I ran various versions on another partition for a year and I can't justify buying it, even at the price MS is giving it away for. As for the quality of phone and tablet apps, iOS is still king by a very wide margin so I'm sticking there as well. Its too bad because WP is actually a very good mobile platform, the best in some ways.

The best thing Windows currently has are services by other companies, things like Steam and Battle.net, and those are available on other platforms like the Mac and soon Linux. Games For Windows Live is a disaster and the other MS services aren't much better, so I'm fine being in Google/Apple/Valve/Amazon ecosystems instead. It just boggles my mind that Microsoft, a leading software company, keeps dropping the ball in ways their competition doesn't.

So Intel CPUs in a phone, meh, having my desktop apps on a phone when they work much better on a laptop or desktop doesn't thrill me. I know a VNC app isn't quite the same thing, but its a bit of a preview there. Better optimized phone and tablet apps is what it needs, and WP has a long way until it reaches iOS or even Android levels of support.